All Our Shimmering Skies: A Novel

Great book! Another one for me by this author. This author makes the characters in his books 3 dimensional in every way. The dialogue doesn’t feel scripted, the writing is almost poetic. Very well written book and not at all your typical coming of age story. I’d hardly qualify it as that actually. It’s more an adventure book. Definitely worth the read.

A gorgeously written, powerful story that is disturbing yet beautiful.

I went into this book completely blind, guided only by the title, the cover, and the synopsis. I didn't know what to expect, and in the end, I found a reading that I loved, perhaps due to the surprise effect of knowing practically nothing.

'The Art of Looking at the Sky' is a curious, unique book. It has an original plot, in the sense that I haven't read or seen characters or anything that reminded me of other readings. To begin with, the book is set in the Australian city of Darwin in 1942, just when it is bombed by the Japanese. And in this city lives our singular protagonist: Molly Hook, a 13-year-old girl who works as a gravedigger and who we practically see lose her parents at the beginning of the story.

Molly Hook firmly believes that her family and she are cursed and that, on the other hand, the sky sends her gifts and signs of where she needs to go to break the curse. So, together with Molly and two other characters, Grace Maze and Yukio, we embark on a magical realism adventure into the depths of northern Australia.

With so few characters, they are very well-defined and enjoyable to read. Family, friendship, and death are prominent themes throughout the story, all wrapped in a mysticism expertly crafted by the author. It is not a fantasy book per se; magical elements are mentioned, but everything is integrated into an atmosphere of reality. (Translated from Spanish)